We have a bunch of old family videos which the family has always loved to get out and watch every few years. My grandkids have them memorized. “There’s grandma again chasing her dog around the yard.” “Look at mommy in the stroller. Grandma that is a funny pair of jeans you have one?” “Look at me! Look at me! I am opening Christmas presents in my diapers!” We always watch them in chronological order. It is like one three hour session of my life from 5 years old to 60 years old. The passage of time is painful, as I wave at the TV when my father, now gone, is silly and waves to the camera. My granddaughter always says, “Wave to great Grandpa!” pause………. “I miss him.”
I try not to be melancholy because my mother is sitting right next to me. She always sighs when HER mother passes by the video in her little pillbox hat and mother’s day corsage and says, “She was always so proper.” But she is dead silent when she and Dad are in the videos. She stares, resolutely with a faint painted smile. I put the videos out of reach and view. Maybe we won’t have to watch them again.
Tonight, while I think about the videos, mom is sitting in her room, reliving the entire funeral which was videotaped. Dad has been gone a year and 9 months and she has never watched it. She is sobbing – only slightly. What do I do? Do I comfort her? Dismiss it? Minimize it? Tell her to stop? I don’t want to go through that pain again. Why does she? I don’t like what death does to my life or hers. I don't like having to face things I don't want to face when I don't want to face them.
I wanted to come home tonight, eat ice cream and watch something dumb like Say Yes to the Dress! But instead……………………………………..
Patiently reliving my sorrows.~
